A Mark, a Yen, a Buck or a Pound

As soon as the ‘unthinkable’ becomes thinkable it also, and immediately, becomes sayable as well:

Italy’s labor minister called for a referendum to see if Italians want to temporarily bring back the lira after widespread popular discontent over high prices that many blame on the introduction of the euro.

Temporarily?

Meanwhile, rumours that the German government is looking to distance itself from the Euro are being ‘officially denied’.

Of course, none of this means that the Euro is going anywhere anytime soon or possibly at all but it would be fun to start a sweepstake on which Eurozone country will be the first to cut and run. For what it’s worth, my guess is France.

David, I dunno how much of the news you have seen today, but the euro dived in the foreign currency markets against the dollar and the pound. The markets take it seriously that Italy might want to leave.

The joke is that a lot of people are against the Euro because of the central bank’s supposedly “tight money” policy.

Actually (as anyone who looks at the back pages of the “Economist” can see) the central bank is issuing Euro credit-money at a very fast rate – its policy is certainly not “tight”.

How does this affect personal liberty? Well if there are lots of currencies there is a least a chance that one of them will not be inflated by the govenment (at least not so much) and inflation (increase in the money supply – NOT increase in the “price level”) is the source of the boom-bust cycle. Looking at another nearby country is a good way to check how bad their government is – if things are under the control of a Europe wide state then comparisons are more difficutlt – and limiting statism is more difficult.

In short a centralised Euro monoply is even worse than lots of different fiat currencies (the fiat currencies of the nation states) – more ripping people off (via the inflation of the money supply) and more distorion of the economic structure leading to booms and busts – and all the demands for statism that the busts lead to.

In an article about the problems of the euro, the German magazine Stern advised readers to check their euro banknotes. The notes issued in Germany, it explained, begin their serial numbers with “X”; those issued in Italy begin with “S”. Hold on to the former, was the suggestion, and get rid of the latter while you can.

When I filmed 30 years ago at the HQ of the “yes” campaign, I saw graphic evidence of the disparity in funding between the two campaigns. The sloaney figure of Caroline de Courcey Ireland told me how she was organising plane-loads of pro-European speakers from all parties across the country to be flown for briefings by top level Eurocrats.

“We chartered a series of 100-seater jet planes from British Caledonian airlines – and all those nice little girls in their kilts. We took nearly 1,000 in all”

And where, I asked her 30 years on, had the money come from? “From the European Commission: it was a sort of special dispensation. I don’t know how they fixed it, because one didn’t ask too much. One just said ‘Thank you very much’ and got on with organising it.”

Michael Cockerell’s film ‘How We Fell for Europe’ is on BBC2 at 8.25 tonight (4th June).

If Italy left the Euro, it would be in the same situation as Argentine. Their problems, as well our own here in Germany, are self-inflicted.

Btw, personal liberties have nothing to do with the European Union or the Euro, for the individual member states, including Britain, do to the citizens whatever they please; should said measures prove unpopular, the govenments in question wil claim that Brussels made them do it. That way they can deflect the negative sentiments from themselves, and they even
get to keep the measures in place, for the protesters are too busy raling at the EU to get anything done bout them.

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